Drinking water may boost brain power
喝水或能提升腦力

Mon, Aug 19, 2013 - Page 11

A new small study finds that quenching your thirst with water may give your brain a boost.

Results showed that subjects who drank about three cups of water (775 milliliters) before taking a battery of cognitive tests performed better on a test measuring reaction time than subjects who did not drink water.

This difference was especially noticeable when the subjects were especially thirsty, with researchers speculating that being thirsty may take attention away from the task at hand, slowing response time.

In one test on rule-learning, however, thirsty subjects actually fared better, but researchers are not clear why.

“It might be that physiological processes [of drinking or not drinking water] affect performance on different tasks in different ways,” study researcher Caroline Edmonds, of the University of East London School of Psychology told LiveScience.

In the study, 34 adult subjects were asked to abstain from food and drink starting at 9pm before coming into the lab for testing the next morning. In some cases, subjects were offered a cereal bar with water for breakfast. On another day, they were offered a cereal bar with no water.

Prior research has found that water consumption can improve memory in children, LiveScience reports.